Race Dean Changes Jobs

Hilda Hernandez-Gravelle, assistant dean of the College for race relations and minority affairs, will leave her job as one of three college administrators charged with improving race relations in Harvard College.

She will become special assistant to associate vice president for affirmative action James S. Hoyte.

Hernandez-Gravelle is on vacation until September I and did not respond to repeated messages left at here home and office over the past two days. Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett is away until August 24, his office said. Dean of Students Archie C. Epps, who coordinates race relations efforts for the College, is away until September 7. Hoyte was also on vacation this week.

The reason for Hernandez-Gravelle's departure is unknown, as is the fate of her office and its programs. There is no word yet on a replacement. But the move is bound to attract attention when students return in the fall.

The structure of race relations programs and personnel in the College has been under review for the past year. In December 1991, a Crimson series reported infighting and a lack of cooperation between two separate structures charged with improving race relations in the College: the Hernandez-Gravelle-led Office of Race Relations and Minority Affairs and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations.

Hired in 1987 from Harvard's Bureau of Study Counsel in response to student complaints about alleged racial insensitivity in the classroom, Hernandez-Gravelle served as the College's racial harassment hearing officer. She also sponsored programs aimed at preventing racism--a week of events staged by a student group called AWARE (Actively Working Against Racism and Ethnocentrism.)

Another student group, known as SHARE (Students at Harvard and Radcliffe Against Racism and Ethnocentrism), is composed of students who put on workshops about race for small groups.

Hernandez-Gravelle also supervised a network of race relations tutors in the undergraduate houses.

The dean was criticized by the movement opposing "political correctness" on college campuses.

In Dinesh D'Souza's Illeberal Education, the dean is a portrayed as "a sort of ideological monitor of the faculty," and she is reported to have denounced a 1950s theme meal in a Harvard dining hall as being insufficiently sensitive to minorities who were discriminated against in the 1950s

The dean was criticized by the movement opposing "political correctness" on college campuses.

In Dinesh D'Souza's Illeberal Education, the dean is a portrayed as "a sort of ideological monitor of the faculty," and she is reported to have denounced a 1950s theme meal in a Harvard dining hall as being insufficiently sensitive to minorities who were discriminated against in the 1950s